Archive for October, 2017

I went to El Chorro yesterday afternoon not knowing if fly fishing held any real prospects and, somewhat to my surprise, I managed to catch a lovely carp. The water level has fallen since my last visit which was perhaps 6 weeks ago and the the Río Turón was little more than a shallow trickle as it spilled into the reservoir. Continue reading →

For some time now I have been working on a watercolour painting of a perch. I laid the keel, so to speak, back in June when I sketched a pencil outline but then the project when on hold during the summer when my “painting room” was occupied by Grandad and I succumbed to a prolonged apathy that seems to afflict everyone here during the height of the summer.

Recently though, when life was simplified by the departure of guests and the sting had come out of the summer heat, I wandered back into Grandad´s room, dug out the perch and continued to work on it. Continue reading →

On Wednesday we finally got some rain here. It has been a long time coming and when it did arrive it drove down with an unrelenting ferocity that, in pretty short order, turned roads into shallow rivers and gave us a few hours of chaos. It is often the way things go here. The rains, when they do come, come with a vengeance. Continue reading →

Last weekend I drove up to Trujillo to spend some time fishing with Colin McLachlan. It was a hell of a drive and my wife thought I was crazy. The last time Colin and I crossed paths was also in Trujillo when Steven Lawler and I drove up in April 2016. On that occasion Colin was on a fishing trip with Dave Felce and Fred Carrie. This time round the other guys could not make it so it was just the two of us. Continue reading →

Recently I have been battling with some fish which have been quite intent on burying themselves in snags. It happened on Sunday up in Extremadura when I was fishing with Colin McLachlan and it happened again today on my local river. Continue reading →

A very odd thing happened yesterday when I was fishing with Colin McLachlan. I was sneaking around the shore of a reservoir called Embalse de Gabriel y Galán in Extremadura when I came across a full grown griffon vulture on the slope leading to the shoreline. I had been so intent on looking for barbel in the shallows that I approached reasonably closely before I noticed. It is very unusual to see a vulture like this on the ground and there was no sign of a carcass that might have attracted it. Continue reading →